with light, the solid stone-work is only a framing for the glorious vision. The sun pours through the many-colored glass, and the figures of beauty stand out like living forms. We hear the choir of voices about the altar, and seem to see the hovering angels join the song. The words of prayer seem to rise from the parted lips of saints; and all this transformation marks the difference between the simple. words" without " and " within." We looked from the outer world, seeking to penetrate the beauty of the work of man, and saw nothing well. We entered within the structure that man raised and looked outward upon an illumined world, and, behold! this wondrous change. It may be that all we need to give grace and beauty to many another great truth or experience at which we gaze from without is to hear and obey a voice which says, "Come within."

The law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did, whereby we draw nigh to God. "The law, having a shadow of good things to come and not the very image of the things, can never make the comers thereunto perfect." For "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."

THOMAS R. SLICER.

EDITORS' NOTE-BOOK.

ECHOES OF THE LUTHER CELEBRATION.

For two or three months, the chief event in the theological world has been the celebration of Luther's birth, and all periodicals are still full of it. Such wide-spread and unqualified tributes to the work and words of one man, after the lapse of four centuries, are exceptional in history; and, without taking anything from the praise which fairly belongs to this great character and leader in religious movements, we have wondered if some force were not given to this demonstration, so universal throughout Christendom, by a deep impression that, while great transitional periods have their peculiar characteristics, there is still some analogy between the conditions of our own age and those which existed in the days that were preparing the Reformation, -conditions which prophesy social and religious issues of hardly less moment than those which made the sixteenth century so marked. For that event was not by any means theological only. It included social, political, and educational, as well as religious questions; and Luther had those rare gifts which enabled him to give a higher direction and a certain unity to them all. That wonderful power for work; that ceaseless industry; that physical courage which always calls for the world's admiration; that readiness of utterance, either in the discussion of the profoundest subjects with the philosophers or appealing to humblest peasants; that unflagging enthusiasm which is so contagious; that personal righteousness amid the open corruptions of the Church; that tenderness for every creature, which led him to take the hunted hare in his bosom to hide it from the cruel fate which was sport to others; that natural heart of sorrow, which said over the grave of his beloved daughter: "I am joyful in spirit, but, oh, how sad in the flesh! it is a strange feeling this: to know that she is so certainly at rest, and yet to be so sad,”— all these went to make up one of those remarkable lives which at once mould and fit into the circumstances of a great epoch in human history. In the early part of our Revolutionary period there was no desire to cast off the rule of the mother country, but only to be released from her arbitrary restrictions. In May, 1776, Washington wrote, "When I took command of the army, I abhorred the idea of independence; but I am fully satisfied now that

nothing else will save us." Jefferson said: "There is not in the British Empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. I would rather be in dependence on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation upon earth, or than on no nation." Our leaders had no thought of the issues to which they were to be led: they saw a few things clearly, that a few things were to be insisted upon without regard to consequences, that in these a few great principles were involved, and the minor issues must adjust themselves. So Luther had no thought of breaking with Rome. He yielded to no one in his entire devotion to the head of the Church at Rome. The Pope was to him all that the most faithful had portrayed. "Hail, holy Rome," he exclaimed as he drew near, thinking that but a sight of the abode of all imagined purity and holiness would dispel

all his doubts.

It was not the only time that a nearer acquaintance with those who are administering the sacred rites has been known to take all their saintliness away. The open immorality and degradation of the Church only aroused him to insist upon its purification: he had then no thought of separating from it. That was the one great issue which was clearer to him each year, the necessity which would not let him rest: other matters must settle themselves. All souls driven by a mighty faith in some great purpose are sure some way of escape from all lesser difficulties will be found. What about the worship of images? asks one; and Luther replies, "Where faith and charity are there can be no sin in adoring or not adoring." What about purgatory? "It seems to be a very doubtful matter." The elevation of the host? "Do as it pleases you." But there must have been days of awful solicitude to multitudes, when the images and masses and confessions were gone, and the soul was left for a while without its accustomed supports, and had not found the deeper communion of spirit with spirit. "Why is it," said Luther's wife, "that in our old faith we prayed so often and so warmly, and that our prayers are now so few and so cold?" This is always the peril of a transition period, of revolution, of freedom in State or Church, in politics, in society, in thought, in worship. It may be difficult, perhaps impossible, to trace all the influences which led on to this great religious movement. Many of them are hidden in the past, as well as under that thicker veil which always somewhat conceals from human vision and judgment the eternal plan;

but, in the main, they are the same as in all great revolutionary and reformatory periods. The vast forces of human society work for a long time in secret. Individuals here and there have glimpses of the higher truth, indignation at social evils and corruptions. They are born for reality instead of formalism. The reality deepens; for at bottom, when for a while we get rid of the conventionalities, men love the reality and the truth, and in the fulness of time some leader comes in whom the long gathering forces all culminate, and press to organization and victory. The true reformation is never completed, else all spur would be taken away, and hope die out. It is not a question now about indulgences, or the authority of Rome, or justification by faith, but the very reality of spiritual things about moral obligations, about immortality, about God.

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC VIEW OF THE REFORMATION.

It is remarkable that, through this prolonged celebration of Luther's birthday, no word of sympathy, no word of just criticism, come from the Roman Catholic sect. However much, in reviewing the time of Luther, the corruptions of the papacy at that time must in historical fairness be recited (and never can be exaggerated) to complete the picture, and to give one of the chief explanations of this movement in religion, which, from whatever point we view it, must always be looked upon as one of the greatest,-if the Roman Catholic sect had any breadth or critical judgment, or any regard for truth and righteousness, it would heartily join with Protestantism in commemorating the actual virtues and gifts of Luther, and in acknowledging how that very movement gave a revival even to its own body, and saved it from the utter death of worldliness and immorality, - just as now, when the partisan strife is over, so many of the truest and best men of the South confess that the end of slavery is a real benefit,- for surely the Reformation called even the papacy back to its higher mission. We have, on the contrary, been treated to nothing but misrepresentations of the causes both of the inevitable discussion and separation, and to the most miserable attempts to set the life of Luther in a false light, to exaggerate his faults and weaknesses, to deny his merits, indeed in no instance to take any broad or generous view of that period, or to manifest the least desire for truth or fairness in reviewing

that character which for a few months has commanded the attention of a large part of the best Christian thought and life. It shows the peculiar bitterness of the theological spirit, that even after four centuries there has been no abatement of the rancor of that discussion, no attempt to look at it in any other light than that of individual ambition, disappointment, or hatred. Thus, the Catholic sect has missed one of its greatest opportunities, for Romanism itself was surely a vast gainer by the Reformation which Luther so grandly led on; and it is astonishing that no one in that Church has been far-seeing enough or magnanimous enough to confess that even by that disturbance and division it was saved from the rapid and complete destruction of its own corruptions, if its infallible claims had not been exposed and overthrown.

The real explanation lies in the fact that that sect has not changed in the least its spirit or its methods since the days of the Reformation. It has not been taught anything by discussion, by struggle, and by the continued separations of its best elements. It is as ready as then to ally itself with every degrading political influence, either to gain or to preserve power, to harbor and to gloss over every immorality to those who will work with it, to let anybody within its pale be as heretical as he pleases, if only he is so with shut doors and curtained windows, as it was said of the Church when Luther went to Rome, "The priests were mocking unbelievers, conducting with edifying solemnity of visage the venerable rites at which they were all the while inwardly chuckling." Indeed, in the very midst of the Luther celebration, Monseigneur Capel delivered a lecture in Tremont Temple, upon "Infallible Authority necessary to Faith," in which the views of the Roman Catholic sect were set forth with a studied neglect, or rather perhaps an utter ignorance, of the progress or condition of religious thought since Luther's day, which could be dismissed with a smile, were it not that, under its attempted arguments in favor of religion, it conceals those principles which inevitably destroy religion altogether. Here are the same old claims set forth in the same old terms, which are an insult alike to private judgment, to any reasonable conceptions of revelation, or to the efforts of Christian people toward moral living. The time has passed for a man to present himself before a respectable audience with a plea against private judgment, or that, in religious ministrations or activities or teachings, no reference is to be made to